ISIS declares Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria

ISIS declares Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria
(Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The Sunni extremist group fighting to take over Iraq and Syria declared Sunday that it was forming an Islamic state to restore the 7th-century Islamic caliphate. The group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), said its name would now be simply the Islamic State. It declared all other Islamist factions "invalid." The move represented an open challenge to other affiliates of al Qaeda, which has long named restoring the caliphate as one of its main goals. Read more at NBC News.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.